A tear slid down Mandy’s cheek before she realised it had even formed. She closed her eyes. Fuck. She’d always known Rebecca was never going to be interested in her that way. And for Rebecca to acknowledge Mandy’s feelings now, of all times, to admit that she’d always known and had never shirked from being Mandy’s friend, while asking Mandy to lay hands on her bare breasts—oh, the fucking irony.

She nodded, opened her eyes, and took a deep breath as she gazed at Rebecca’s beautiful face. Gently, she pushed Rebecca’s arm above her head again and then rubbed her own hands lightly together to warm them. She winked at Rebecca as she did so.

“Can’t be touching you with cold hands now, can I?”

Rebecca smiled.

Carefully, slowly, Mandy examined Rebecca’s breasts. Ignoring their fullness, the wonderful heft of them in her hands, she firmly pressed and felt her way around both of them. The nipples crinkled as she moved around them.

Oh fuck. Keeping her face neutral, as her mind went reeling, she went back around them both again to be sure.

“Well?” Rebecca’s whisper trembled with fear.

Mandy swallowed hard, but her voice broke anyway. “There’s more than one.”

* * *

The funeral was lovely, if a funeral could be called such a thing. Masses of flowers, lots and lots of people, lots and lots of memories shared of a wonderful woman who had touched so many people in her too-short life. After they lowered her coffin into the ground, after everyone had departed for the wake, Mandy stood by the graveside and cried for the first time since that night in Rebecca’s flat. She had spent the last three months being strong for Rebecca, and there had been no room for her own tears. Because Rebecca’s decline had been swift, there had barely been enough time to get all her affairs in order, as the expression went, and Mandy was glad she’d been there to help Rebecca do just that.

By the time the GP had examined Rebecca, by the time the biopsies had been done, by the time they’d investigated further, the cancer had already spread beyond her lymph nodes and was out of control. They’d tried all they could—chemotherapy, radiotherapy—but all in vain. Rebecca had died early one Thursday morning in a palliative care hospice. Mandy had been with her, holding her hand, telling her how much she loved her, had always loved her, just needing to say the words out loud for once.

Rebecca had smiled weakly up at her, kissed the back of Mandy’s hand, and whispered, “Thank you.” And then she had drifted off to sleep.

A few minutes later, she was gone.